The Bible Never Condemns Transgender Identities

In my faith tradition, which teaches that the Sabbath is on the seventh day of the week (Saturday) and that it was never changed to Sunday, it’s popular for evangelists to offer huge amounts of money to people if they can find the verse that says it was changed. The same challenge could be offered to find the verse that condemns transgender identities. It’s not there.

Once I was really open to asking the question, coming to affirm transgender and non-binary identities was easy. There isn’t any condemnation of trans people in the Bible. Yes. You read that right. There is no condemnation of trans people in the Bible.

There are a lot of misinformation or partial information about trans people in traditionalist settings, and I’ve written about those here. If this topic is new for you, or if you’ve only heard it from one side, you really should read it.

Today I want to talk about the main text of scripture that is offered as the reason trans people should be discouraged from affirming their gender when it differs from their exterior appearance, particularly sexual organs. There are a couple other minor texts to be addressed, but the lion’s share of the argument rests on one verse alone.

“God Created Them Male and Female”

The Biblical Research Institute (the official theological branch of the Seventh-day Adventist church) said that “in scripture, our gender identity is, to a significant extent, determined by our birth sex with God being the author of gender identity.” But does the Bible say this?

They provide Genesis 1:27 and a couple verses that quote Genesis 1:27 (Gen 5:1-2; Mark 10:6) as evidence, but where does this text teach “our gender identity is… determined by our birth sex”? Particularly since by “birth sex” they generally mean sexual organs? I don’t see anything at all about anatomy. Here’s the verse:

So God created man in his own image,

in the image of God he created him;

male and female he created them.

On these three lines rests nearly all non-trans-affirming theology. Yet this verse simply does not say what they say it does. They are looking for a passage to prove that gender is determined by the way a person’s exterior presents their gender, but this verse says literally nothing about that subject.

God created gender. Yes. Gender exists. But just because gender exists doesn’t mean it exists in a binary way. How might gender be expressed? What do we do when someone’s brain is at odds with their reproductive organs? What should we do when someone’s brain is telling them they are a different gender than what can be perceived on their exterior? What do we do when people are intersex? It certainly doesn’t offer clarity on these kinds of questions.

Deconstructing Gender

Sometimes trans affirmation is interpreted as a war on gender, or a denial of gender, and therefore out of harmony with this verse in which God created gender. But trans people are not destroying gender.

What transgender and gender non-binary people are doing as a way of exploring life as they live it is looking at gender in a ways that explore innate and culturally constructed understandings of gender. In my experience, trans and gender non-conforming people think with more depth and insight about gender than anyone else. They aren’t erasing it. They are delving into the meaning of gender for themselves and society.

In fact, if anyone confirms the innate nature of gender it’s trans people. They experience a deep innate sense of gender that goes against every experience of socialization they have. Because their exterior often presents as a different gender than their innate sense of gender, they are treated as boys their whole lives, for example, but gender is so innate psychologically that they still know themselves to be girls. Trans people don’t destroy gender, they testify to it. If gender is innate even for them, it must be for cisgender people as well.

Getting back to the text, trans people don’t deny the creation of male and female, not by any means. I see in them a beautiful expression of God’s good creation of gender.

Plain Meaning

If there is a more sophisticated way of understanding this text, I’m open to it, but I haven’t heard it yet. What I do hear from non-affirming people is that this text is clear in condemning trans and non-binary people, but it is not. The plain meaning is simply that men and women are both expressions of the nature of God. That’s what it says. Men and women. Both in God’s image. Simple.

I’ve always loved Genesis 1:27. Despite the history of Christianity, and it’s persistent struggles with misogyny, this verse unequivocally states that the image of God is not reserved only for men. It speaks to me of the power of scripture to challenge injustice, even in this most ancient text. What a beautiful testimony to inspiration.

The interpretation of this text that it means that gender must match genitalia only makes sense if you begin with that understanding of gender and read it into the text. It does not say that gender is based on genitalia. It does not say that minority gender presentations are an affront to God or to creation. It does not require people to live as the gender society perceives them as. It gives no advice or indication of what to do when the brain is out of odds with the sexual organs. Nor does it give advice on what to do when a person is intersex, presenting physiology that is neither distinctly male or female, and living the biological reality that not all people are created male and female in the sense of either/or, some are male and female in the sense of both/and.

People use this text to say other must be completely male or completely female. When some people don’t present that way, either because they are transgender or intersex, they want to force people into those boxes no matter what the consequences. But such a reading is imposed on the text. As we shall see, there are good reasons to see that this text itself illuminates the beauty of transgender identity.

God’s Gender

Here’s another part of Genesis 1:27 that is so simple yet easy to miss. If we, as male and female, are created in God’s image, what does that say about the gender of God?

God is both male and female. Not male one day and female the next, but always and eternally composing all it is to be male and all it is to be female.

Being more like God certainly does not require a harsh gender binary. Quite the opposite. Sin goes against the character of God and is not in harmony with it. To do something evil means to do something that is in violation of the character and nature of God. But God’s gender is neither male nor female, but both.

So how could a transgender or non-binary gender identity be out of step with God’s character? Why would we want to force non-binary or transgender people into an unbending standard that is out of harmony with the way God describes themselves?

There are people in the world who experience gender in non-binary ways, and those people can teach us something about the nature of God. We should not exclude them or force them to try and fit the mold of our own understanding. Such an attempt is out of harmony with Genesis 1:27 and not an affirmation of it.

Many people in the LGBT community celebrate such expressions. I’ve been taught by genderqueer people how to acknowledge and embrace my own more masculine characteristics that I never was able to change anyways. I’ve learned from my transgender friends how destructive it can be to deny this diversity, and how beautiful and life-affirming it is to celebrate gender diversity.

Hebrew Merism

The Hebrew language also offers a clue for why this texts should not be understood as describing gender in terms of a binary. Hebrew thinking and language in fact precludes such an understanding. Binary and dualistic thinking is a product of Greek thought, not Hebrew thought.

Genesis 1:27 could be a Hebrew merism, a statement which “combines two words to express a single idea; it expresses ‘totality’ by combining two contrasts or two extremes.” This definition is from an article published by the Biblical Research Institute, a conservative, Seventh-day Adventist theological entity.

An example of merism is saying “heavens and earth” to express all of creation, including the sun and moon which were understood to be between the heavens and earth. Another example is describing all of the Hebrew scriptures as the “Law” and the “Prophets,” when in fact they also include a third section described as the “Writings.” The intention is not to exclude the Writings, but to include them.

Is the statement “male and female” a merism? Maybe, maybe not, but to say the the verse is clearly and definitively a prohibition against anything but a strict binary in which all of humanity must fit fully on either one side or the other is to violate the way the Hebrew language functions. Such an interpretation cannot be supported by the text.

By now I hope you see that the primary text used to limit the treatment options of transgender people, to force them to live as if they were cisgender, simply does not hold up to scrutiny. There are a couple other texts to examine, but this is the main text offered as a clear statement against transgender people.

All transgender people want is the freedom to make their own decisions about how to best handle the difficult decisions they face. What they need from us is support for the lives they choose to live. What they can teach us about God and gender is profound. We need to extend the basic dignity of allowing them to define themselves, to choose their pronouns, and to choose their treatment options.

My wish for the church is that cisgender people would have more humility, more compassion, and more clear thinking on the reality of the biblical text and its teachings.

Post navigation

4 comments

Your compassion and defense of the LGBT community is admiral and inspiring. The church as a whole has failed to show the LGBT community the love God expects from His children, and in doing so, has made oftentimes made dialogue on topics such as these either all but impossible due to a lack of compassion, empathy, and ability to see the person they’re conversing with the in the same manner as God sees them.

You raise an interesting point in your post regarding the gender of God and seem to suggest that God is either non-binary or gender-fluid since both men and women are made in the image of God. While I think this is an interesting point you bring up, I wonder how this point fits into the Trinitarian understanding and view of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Throughout Scripture, gender-specific pronouns for God describe God as male, and in fact the titles of Father and Son also suggest a set male-gender, which suggests that God is not necessarily both genders in the sense that we, as created beings, understand gender. What are your thoughts on this, and how do you reconcile the use of those titles and pronouns with the suggestion that God non-binary/gender-fluid?

I personally believe that in the creation of men and women, God simultaneously created the concept of gender attached to biological sex – that these two elements of a human being emerged simultaneously at the moment of creation. In other words, I personally believe in a binary-gender view of mankind, though admittedly am still learning and seeking to understand how to reconcile this view with those who identify as transgender. I hold this view based in Scripture, not due to particular verses pulled out of context, but the message and means of Scripture as a whole.

Great portions of Scripture are dedicated to the idea of identity (for instance, the Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians), and because I believe in the inerrancy of Scripture and Scripture as God’s revelation to mankind, I find it all but impossible to believe that when it comes to something as important as identity, God would be silent. In fact, I think much of Scripture speaks to identity beginning in a binary manner, and is reflected throughout Scripture as such (with the title of God the Father and Christ the Son, for instance). However, I do believe that being made in the image of God means that both men and women have traits that are interchangeable, and to classify certain traits as gender-exclusive isn’t inline with the character of God (for instance, that being sensitive or emotional is a strictly female trait, when in fact, Christ is noted throughout the Gospels as being sensitive, emotional, compassionate, and weeping, thus defying modern ideas of gender-norms).

Thank you again for your thoughtful article – it’s given me some serious points to research further as I seek to understand and learn how to communicate better over topics such as these.

I might play around with concepts a bit, but I don’t know that I would describe God as non-binary as exclusive from male or female. God isn’t like us. All gender comes from God, from the very nature of God, since all humanity is created in the image of God. God is fully male, fully female, and yet neither. That’s what I get from the statement that male and female are both in the image of God. Male descriptions of God in the Bible are no more literally true than the idea that God is a father as a human father is a father, through a sexual relationships. It’s metaphorical. In fact, it could even be argued that it’s more a description of the change that happened at the incarnation than something inherent to the nature of God as described in Genesis pre-incarnation. The terminology of Father and Son is something that is applied in that context. In fact, in the OT Israel is God’s child. This isn’t literal. There are tons of examples in scripture of metaphors used to describe God, when we forget that these are metaphors we lose the very divinity of God. God is the lover of creation, and also the parent, and also the shepherd, and also the king, and also the judge. You get the point. Nor is it the exclusive description of God as being male, as evidenced right here in the genesis creation narrative, but elsewhere also, as I’m sure you’re aware. I’d also take issue with the idea that just because things are described in a certain way in scripture, they can only be that way. Description of gender in scripture is only that, description, there are no prohibitions on transgender identity and no commands to identify cisgender. These concepts weren’t even under consideration. There are lots of examples of this in history, people resisted giving rights to common people because scripture always gave rights to the ruling class, and even commanded people to obey them, for example. But we recognize the themes and meaning of scripture, as well as the legitimacy of doing things differently than they were done in the Ancient Near East or the Second Temple Period of the New Testament without violating scripture. And thank God. I like being able to vote.

There’s something that I’m struggling to understand. Your blogpost pushes for the understanding of God as simultaneously masculine and feminine, which I agree with, but the pointed telos toward which transgenderism is moving is not a simultaneous male-female state. As I understand it, the source of pain for a transgender person is the feeling that their biological sex does not reflect their gender identity (or vice versa), and the solution people seek is not a simultaneous male-female nature which you see in Genesis 1:27, but a position more definite on the other side of the spectrum. Therefore, it does not seem effective to use Genesis 1:27 as a merism for the Scriptural defense to advocate transgender people.

If one were to follow your line of reasoning, if I’m understanding it, there wouldn’t be a problem at all with someone whose gender identity didn’t match the sex they were assigned at birth, you’re concerned only with people reflecting either one side or another. Am I understanding correctly? There are also people who have non-binary identities, but for the sake of this discussion let’s not consider this.

What has been argued from Gen 1:27 is that people either fall all on the male/man side (sex is male, gender is man) or all of the female/woman side. Transgender means gender than is opposite assigned sex, on the other side of the stream so to speak. Where as for cis people it is on the same side. So they are saying that God created these two very clear categories and there can be no mixing or variation. I’m arguing that the text does not present these two categories as discrete and allows for people who are assigned a sex at birth that differs from their gender identity. Does that make sense?

But what I think your comment does point to is the fact that affirming transgender people does not erase the concept of gender. In fact, it reinforces it as trans people are not saying it does not exist, but that it is innate and unchangeable, but not always within the binary in the way cisgender people have conceptualized things based on our own experience without regard to their experience.